"Thaw" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from strangers, and Wee Willie Winkie was a very particular child. Once he accepted an acquaintance, he was graciously pleased to thaw. He accepted Brandis, a subaltern of the 195th, on sight. Brandis was having tea at the Colonel's, and Wee Willie Winkie entered strong in the possession of a good- conduct badge won for not chasing the hens round the compound. He regarded Brandis ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... coupon bonds, issued in the days of eight and ten per cent interest, and gradually narrowing as they drop their semiannual slips of paper, which represent wishes to be realized, as the roses let fall their leaves in July, as the icicles melt away in the thaw of January? ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... morning, to my residence at Headingley, and the police suggested that I should be accompanied by an officer; but I did not believe in my danger, and desired no such protection. In the depths of one winter's night, when a thaw was dissolving a heavy fall of snow, I had a great fright. I had left my cab, which had driven away, and was mounting the steps leading to the porch of my house, when I suddenly saw, lying on the half-melted snow against the door itself, a large bundle wrapped in sacking. I drew ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... time. In cold weather they crowd together in a small compass in order to keep warm; and then their breath and vapor collect in frost, in all parts of the hive, except in the region they occupy. Now, unless the weather moderates, so as to thaw the ice, the bees will be compelled to remain where they are located until their stores are all consumed that are within their reach. One winter we had cold weather ninety-four days in succession, during which time the bees could not move from one ...
— A Manual or an Easy Method of Managing Bees • John M. Weeks
... ice begins to thaw, new mines or deposits of fossil ivory—a perfect treasure of mammoths' tusks—are discovered in the marsh-lands of Eastern Siberia. There are no mammoths now—unless we call elephants by that name; yet their remains have been found upon both continents. ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... thaw, followed by drying wind. The roads were in good order for the visitors to the Aristophanic comedy. The fifth day of Christmas was fixed for the performance. The theatre was brilliantly lighted, with spermaceti candles ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... long, like a sudden flash of lightning, and then acre after acre of the cold lava parted into fragments, turned up edgewise like cakes of ice when a great river breaks up, plunged downward and were swallowed in the crimson cauldron. Then the wide expanse of the "thaw" maintained a ruddy glow for a while, but shortly cooled and became black and level again. During a "thaw," every dismembered cake was marked by a glittering white border which was superbly shaded inward by aurora borealis ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Juggins, see: the pasture green, Obeying Nature's kindly law, Renews its mantle; there has been A thaw. ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... all our noses gay With the influenziay; Flinging sneezes here and yon, Rich and poor alike upon; Clogging up the bronchial tubes Of the Urbans and the Roobs; Opening for all your grip With its lavish stores of pip; Scattering along your route Little gifts of Epizoot; Time of slush and time of thaw, Time of hours mild and raw; Blowing cold and blowing hot; Stable as a Hottentot; Coaxing flowers from the close Just to nip them on the nose; Calling birdies from their nests For to freeze their little chests; ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... But who could have guessed that I was not only going back to a cooler clime, but into the most ghastly weather, weather that threatened to shatter my health! Winter and summer in senseless alternation; twenty-six avalanches in the thaw; and now we have just had eight days of rain with the sky almost always grey—this is enough to account for my profound nervous exhaustion, together with the return of my old ailments. I don't think I can ever remember having had worse weather, and this in my Sils-Maria, whither ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther
... came in a mist of dull gray clouds that clung in rings about the street lamps like the damp fog of a typical February thaw, yet it was the last day of October. Such weather was uncanny. It added to the strange feeling of impending calamity which had been hanging over the business world during the summer and had broken at last into the fierce storms of disaster of the past two weeks. Men ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... of the first fine afternoon to walk over to Brail. It was more than three miles by the road, but she was a famous walker. The lanes were still impassable on account of the thaw; February had set in with unusual mildness: the snow had melted, the little lake at Woodcote was no longer a sheet of blue ice, and Eiderdown and Snowflake were dabbling joyously with their yellow bills in the water and their soft plumes tremulous ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... than Grammer Oliver's own desire, led Grace to take every precaution against being discovered. She went out by the garden door as the safest way, all the household having occupations at the other side. The morning looked forbidding enough when she stealthily opened it. The battle between frost and thaw was continuing in mid-air: the trees dripped on the garden-plots, where no vegetables would grow for the dripping, though they were planted year after year with that curious mechanical regularity of country people in the face of hopelessness; the moss which covered the once broad gravel terrace ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... once became more amiable, and the young wife, clinging to vain hopes, also became more cheerful. The thaw had not yet set in and a hard, smooth, glittering covering of snow extended over the landscape. Neither men nor animals were to be seen; only the chimneys of the cottages gave evidence of life in the smoke that ascended from them into the ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... freeze, the mass may be made still more compact. But large bodies of cavalry, and heavy artillery, cannot venture on the ice unless it be of great thickness and strength. An army can never trust, for any length of time, to either fords or ice; if it did a freshet or a thaw would place it in a most critical state. Military bridges will, therefore, become its only safe reliance ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... breakfast-table. Her slightest wish, however fantastic, was instantly satisfied, if human money or ingenuity could do it. When the frost lasted a stream was dammed and turned from its course that it might flood two meadows, solely in order that she might have a place upon which to skate. With the thaw there came a groom every afternoon with a sleek and beautiful mare in case Miss McIntyre should care to ride. Everything went to show that she had made a conquest of the recluse of the ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... her bed with one bound. She peeped over Gyp's shoulder. A thaw the day before had made the girls very anxious, but now a sparkling crust covered the snow and the early sun struck coldly ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... in his canoe," said Wilton, "he's frozen solidly in the middle of the river, and he won't be able to move it until a thaw comes." ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... his people and appalled the robbers. In this respect it resembled the post-horn of Baron Munchausen's story, which, on being hung before a fire, allowed the notes that had been played into it (but not heard) to thaw out and entertain the company. And if the story of the shell is doubted, one has only to look at it in the Honolulu Museum to ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... loved the English country-side; The wine-leaved bramble in the ride, The lichen on the apple-trees, The poultry ranging on the lees, The farms, the moist earth-smelling cover, His wife's green grave at Mitcheldover, Where snowdrops pushed at the first thaw. Under his hide his heart was raw With joy and pity ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... here perfection keeps no Court, Love dresses here no wanton amorous bowers; Sorrow has made perpetuall winter here, And all my thoughts are Icie, past the reach Of what Loves fires can thaw. ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... if you stay around here, but the ice is breaking up below and above you, on account of the thaw. It won't be safe to go too far, or you'll meet open ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Winter Camp - Glorious Days on Skates and Ice Boats • Laura Lee Hope
... feel my arm rather stiff, and no doubt it will be stiffer still to-morrow. I felt a bit miserable at sunrise after lying there shivering, and envied you fellows who could keep yourselves warm by working; but I am beginning to thaw out now, and the sight of the Kaffirs coming towards us with the horses half an hour ago, and the thought of hot coffee, did even more than the ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... on account of women. I've refused twelve women, and nine have refused me! Yes! There was a time when I played the fool, scented myself, used honeyed words, wore jewellery, made beautiful bows. I used to love, to suffer, to sigh at the moon, to get sour, to thaw, to freeze.... I used to love passionately, madly, every blessed way, devil take me; I used to chatter like a magpie about emancipation, and wasted half my wealth on tender feelings, but now—you must excuse me! You won't get round ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... they all so much enjoyed put them into great spirits; and if either of the younger ones had been asked what he considered the greatest misfortune that could happen to the world, he would very likely have replied, a thaw. When, however, they had exhausted the subject, or at all events the patience of their hearers, their eldest sister proposed that those who were not engaged in any manual employment should read or tell a tale. The ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... generally, they experience their first thawing. Those which a month ago were sour, crabbed, and quite unpalatable to the civilized taste, such at least as were frozen while sound, let a warmer sun come to thaw them, for they are extremely sensitive to its rays, are found to be filled with a rich, sweet cider, better than any bottled cider that I know of, and with which I am better acquainted than with wine. All apples are ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... been under way for ten minutes or so, I said, as if I had but just become aware of his identity, 'Why, how are you? I did not know that I had an acquaintance by my side.' He returned my warm greeting rather distantly; but there was too much at stake to mind this, and I determined to thaw him out, which I accomplished in due time. I found him a free sort of a man to talk, after he got going, and so I made myself quite familiar, and encouraged him to be outspoken. I knew he had heard something about my adventure at ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... two unequal parts, as if in obedience to the mysterious principle of duplication governing so many Martian phenomena.[991] Changes of the hues associated respectively with land and water accompanied in lower latitudes, and were thought to be occasioned by floods ensuing upon this rapid antarctic thaw. It is true that scarcity of moisture would account for the scantiness and transitoriness of snowy deposits easily liquefied because thinly spread. But we might expect to see the whole wintry hemisphere, at any rate, frost-bound, since the sun radiates less than half as much heat ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... Primavera in his Sistine frescos. It is not a sentiment of summer, though it is sometimes a summer warmth which you feel, and except in the steam-heated hotels it does not penetrate to the interiors. In the galleries and the churches you must blow your nails if you wish to thaw your fingers, but, if you go out-of-doors, there is a radiant imitation of May awaiting you. She takes you by your thick glove and leads you in your fur-lined overcoat through sullen streets that open upon sunny squares, with fountains streaming ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... knows," said Dick. "He ducked a couple of days ago. Gone to Cincinnati, I think he said. He works the shell game, and it got pretty hot for him after we left Cumberland. Well, say, this IS great! I guess the drinks are on the Pinkerton office. Thaw out, mister. Charge ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... been frozen for three months, with only the one temporary thaw in November which cost Napoleon so many thousands at his broken bridge across the Beresina. Though no water had flowed beneath this bridge, many strange feet ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... in charity! She did not take the first announcement of his coming very amiably; but when I told her she was to reign in the nursery, and take care the poor little chief know the sound of a Scots' tongue, she began to thaw; and when he came into the house, pity or loyalty, or both, flamed up hotly, and have quite relieved me; for at first she made a baby of me, and was a perfect dragon of jealousy at poor Ailie's doing anything for me. It was a rich scene when Rachel began giving her directions out of 'Hints for the ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... distilled from this great biographical mass by skilful hands, and, like the succeeding pages, will stand for centuries unshaken by the bombardment of the critic, while succeeding years shall try them with frost and thaw, and the tide of time dash high against their massive front, only ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... occasion for strong scenes and, at last, for a drawn battle between the old and the new. The new, though not acknowledging itself to be beaten, takes to its heels, and flees in the stormy night through wind and snow. But the snow is moist and heavy; it is beginning to thaw. There is a vague presentiment of spring in ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... nature here assumes an aspect so much alike, that cursory observation can scarcely detect a single feature of variety. The winter of more temperate climates, and even in some of no slight severity, is occasionally diversified by a thaw, which at once gives variety and comparative cheerfulness to the prospect. But here, when once the earth is covered, all is dreary, monotonous whiteness—not merely for days or weeks, but for more than ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... when the inhabitants are obliged from famine to change their habitations in winter, the old and feeble are frozen to death, standing and resting their chins on their staves; remaining as pillars of ice, to fall only when the thaw of the ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... prevalent idea that Buda-Pest had been saved by the flood breaking bounds at Vienna, but events proved that our troubles were yet to come. There was a peculiarity in the thaw of this spring which told tremendously against us. It came westward—viz., down stream instead of up stream, as it usually does. This state of things greatly increased the chances of flood in the middle Danube, as the descending volume of water ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... there, till the store of provisions laid in for the use of the landlord and his family falling short before the inroads of the unexpected visitors, they had recourse to the turkeys, geese, and Yorkshire pies with which the coach was laden; and even these were beginning to fail, when a fortunate thaw ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... had passed imperceptibly and the thaw begun when the list of examinations was posted at the University, and I suddenly remembered that I had to return answers to questions in eighteen subjects on which I had heard lectures delivered, but with regard to some of which I had taken no notes and made no preparation whatever. It ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... Dick thoughtfully, "every time there was a thaw or a big rain the cave you're talking about making would be nothing but a big cistern, half-full of water. But we could dig and fit up such a cave somewhere in the ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... it that night until their eyes ached it seemed that it was visibly approaching. And that night, too, the weather changed, and the frost that had gripped all Central Europe and France and England softened towards a thaw. ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... With hard-set teeth, before he issued forth To his day labour, from the cottage door— "I'm thinking that, to-night, if not before, There'll be wild work. Dost hear old Chewton[12] roar? It's brewing up down westward; and look there, One of those sea-gulls! ay, there goes a pair; And such a sudden thaw! If rain comes on, As threats, the waters will be out anon. That path by th' ford's a nasty bit of way— Best let the young ones ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... should it sink into craters? Atmosphere is gas, great in volume, small in matter; where would there be room for it? Solidified by the intense cold? Possibly in the night time. But would not the heat of the long day be great enough to thaw it back again? The same trouble attends the alleged disappearance of the water. Swallowed up in the cavernous cracks, it is said. But why are there cracks? Cooling is not always attended by cracking. Water cools without cracking; cannon balls cool without cracking. Too much ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... numbed that they were unable to feel the brushes they held; in fact, presently, as Philpot was taking a dip of colour, the brush fell from his hand into the pot; and then, finding that he was unable to move his fingers, he put his hand into his trousers pocket to thaw, and began to walk about, stamping his feet upon the ground. His example was quickly followed by Owen, Easton and Harlow, and they all went round the corner to the sheltered side of the house where Slyme was working, and began walking up and down, rubbing their ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... I was sitting alone in the window thinking of my uncle's return. The April thaw was dripping and sparkling without, when my aunt, Pulcheria Petrovna, rushed suddenly into the room. She was always very excitable and complaining, and she always spoke with a shrill voice, gesticulating a great deal; but this time she pounced upon me. "Come, come, go to your father ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... start, a gaunt trapper had set out from the Settlement on the return journey to his camp beyond the Big Fork. He had been in to the Settlement with a pack of furs, and was now hurrying back as fast as he could, because of the sudden thaw. He was afraid the ice might go out of the river and leave him cut off from his camp,—for his canoe was on the other side. As the pelts were beginning to get poor, he had left his rifle at home, and carried no weapon ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Ladyship, Ma'am," he said, in tones that were getting tremulous, even while they retained the deep characteristic intonations of his profession, "we old sea-dogs never stop to look into an almanac, to see which way the wind will come after the next thaw, before we put to sea. It is enough for us, that the sailing orders are aboard, and that the Captain has taken leave ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... brought the travellers to a rugged defile in the mountains, from which they had a view of a beautiful valley of considerable extent. During the last two days a steady thaw had been rapidly melting away the snow, so that it appeared only here and there in the landscape in dazzling patches. At the distance of about half-a-mile from where they halted to breathe the horses before commencing the descent into this vale, ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... whose fortunes he was devoted. Time had softened these prejudices, but had failed to melt them; and if they had a pardonable fashion of congealing under the stress of the Canadian winter, they generally showed signs of a thaw at the approach of spring. At the present moment he had no thought, no eyes, for anything save a mist-enshrouded speck far off across the waters of Lake Ontario. All the impatience and longing of the week just ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... Tibbets, with a bran-new muffler round his neck, and a peculiarly comfortable greatcoat,—best double Saxony, equally new,—dashed into the room, bringing with him a very considerable quantity of cold air, which he hastened to thaw, first in my father's arms, next in my mother's. He then made a rush at the Captain, who ensconced himself behind the dumb-waiter with a "Hem! Mr.—sir—Jack—sir—hem, hem!" Failing there, Mr. Tibbets rubbed off the remaining frost upon his double Saxony against ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the visit was chiefly occupied by the children, to whom their father was eager to show all that he had admired when little older than they were, thus displaying a perfect and minute recollection and affection for the place, which much gratified Honora. The little girl began to thaw somewhat under the influence of amusement, but there was still a curious ungraciousness towards all attentions. She required those of her father as a right, but shook off all others in a manner which might ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... morning was fair and bright, flushed with pink and warmed with sunshine to its golden heart. It was acknowledged to be the "beatinest" winter weather that ever was known,—a thaw that was not enough of a thaw to make the roads impassable, and without rain. The rude little settlement was alive long before the sun was up. Candles and lanterns flitted to and fro. The people were all eager and alert. Even the dogs and roosters ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... with her step, yet man regards it not. She whispers round, her words are in the air, But lost, unheard, they linger freezing there,[2] Without one breath of soul, divinely strong, One ray of mind to thaw them ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... of our niggers' fires. Crouching over the embers I found a bearded figure, which hoarsely denounced me for coming to its fire. I explained that it was our fire, but that he was welcome, and settled down to thaw. It turned out to be a sergeant of the 38th Battery. I asked something, and he began a long rambling soliloquy about things in general, in a thick voice, with his beard almost in the fire, scarcely aware of my presence. I can't ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... passed by the isle of Aland, where the plenipotentiaries of Peter I. and Charles XII. negociated a peace, and endeavored to fix boundaries to their ambition in this frozen part of the world, which the blood of their subjects alone had been able to thaw for a moment. We hoped to reach Stockholm the following day, but a decidedly contrary wind obliged us to cast anchor by the side of an island entirely covered with rocks interspersed with trees, which hardly grew higher than the stones which surrounded them. We hastened, ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... whom? How stale it has become, that printed jollity about Christmas! Carols, and wassail-bowls, and holly, and mistletoe, and yule-logs de commande—what heaps of these have we not had for years past! Well, year after year the season comes. Come frost, come thaw, come snow, come rain, year after year my neighbor the parson has to make his sermons. They are getting together the bonbons, iced cakes, Christmas trees at Fortnum and Mason's now. The genii of the theatres are composing the ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sunlight "burnt" upon the ice, forming a road of golden fire, intolerably bright! and the mist-walls themselves partook of the blaze in a multitude of shining colours. This is our second Frost. About a month ago, before the Thaw came on, there was a storm of wind; during the whole night, such were the thunders and howlings of the breaking ice, that they have left a conviction on my mind, that there are Sounds more sublime than any Sight "can" be, more absolutely suspending the power of comparison, and more utterly absorbing ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... repaid. Language cannot depict the scene before the traveller. The eye wanders over immeasurable space. The sky appears to recede, and the vision possesses double power. The Alpine scenery here is awfully grand, and the alternate thaw and freezing (for when the sun is down it freezes rapidly) produces the most grotesque figures. The only living creature found on the summit of Mont Blanc is a small white butterfly (the ansonia,) which flits over the snow. The chamois is found 10,000 feet above the level ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 383, August 1, 1829 • Various
... the darns in the rumpled pillowcases; at the dull photographs of the landlady's hideous husband and children enshrined on the mantelshelf; looked at the abomination of desolation surrounding him until his soul sickened and cried out like a child's for something more like home. It was as if a spring thaw had melted his ice-bound heart, and on the crest of a wave it was drifting out into the milder waters of some unknown sea. He could have laid his head in the kind lap of a woman and cried: "Comfort me! Give me companionship or ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... will still call her, for simplicity, in spite of her promotion,—had become somewhat afraid of Mrs. Houghton; but now, seeing her husband's courtesy to her guest, understanding from his manner that he liked her society, began to thaw, and to think that she might allow herself to be intimate with the woman. It did not occur to her to be in any degree jealous,—not, at least, as yet. In her innocence she did not think it possible that her husband's heart should be ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... of March the blizzard which had been raging a day or two moderated, and Roosevelt, hoping a thaw had set in, determined to set off after the thieves. They left Rowe as guard over the ranch and "the womenfolks," and with their unwieldy but water-tight craft, laden with two weeks' provision of flour, coffee, and bacon, started ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... up against the bar, the others were earnestly and assiduously endeavoring, with a promise of success, to get By-and-by drunk, which endeavors coincided perfectly with By-and-by's idea of the fitness of things. The fellowship and the liquor combined to thaw out his reserve and to loosen his tongue. After gazing with an air of injured surprise at the genial loosening of his knees he gravely handed his rifle with an exaggerated sweep of his arm, to the cowboy nearest him, and wrapped his arms around the recipient to insure ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... whinnies when I seek the Stable, and I was going to say I cry too, but never mind." (This was partly erased, but Betty made it out.) "It is so cold the Chickens are kept in the kitchen at night lest they freeze. We hope it may thaw soon, as we Desire to get the maple syrup from the trees. Aunt Euphemia is well. Miss Bidwell is still knitting Socks for our poor soldiers, and I made Half of one, but the Devil tempted me with Bad temper and I threw it on the Fire, for which I was well Punished. ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... vision and punctiform sensibility of those who think themselves practical, that speculative natures seem to be proclaiming another set of interests, another and quite miraculous life, when they attempt to thaw out and vivify the vulgar mechanism; and the sense of estrangement and contradiction often comes over the spiritually minded themselves, making them confess sadly that the kingdom of heaven is not of this world. As common morality itself falls easily into mythical expressions and speaks ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Fitzwater, take your child. My dying frost, which no sun's heat can thaw, Closes the powers of all my outward parts: My freezing blood runs back unto my heart, Where it assists death, which it would resist: Only my love a little hinders death, For he beholds her eyes, and cannot smite: Then go not yet, Matilda, stay awhile. Friar, make speed, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... the old man, cheerfully, "but that's not my way—not my way. Any of you froze," he went on ungrammatically, "'cause if so, out you go and thaw ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... morning of October 15th we got up at three o'clock. Hot sweet tea was the one thing we all craved. The tea-pot was found to be frozen solid, although it had been hung up in the tent. It took an hour to thaw and the tea was just warm enough for practical purposes when I made an awkward move in the crowded tent and kicked over the tea-pot! Never did men keep their tempers better under more aggravating circumstances. Not a word of reproach or indignation greeted ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... here time enough," says Tom. And then there takes place that slow walking up and down of the hounds, which on such mornings always continues for half an hour. Let him who envies the condition of the man who hunts and likes it, remember that a cold thaw is going on, that our friend is already sulky with waiting, that to ride up and down for an hour and a half at a walking pace on such a morning is not an exhilarating pastime, and he will understand that the hunting man himself may have ...
— Hunting Sketches • Anthony Trollope
... month after that night he remained near the cabin. At least once each day, and sometimes at night, he would return to the clearing. And more and more frequently he was thinking of Neewa. Early in March came the Tiki-Swao—(the Big Thaw). For a week the sun shone without a cloud in the sky. The air was warm. The snow turned soft underfoot and on the sunny sides of slopes and ridges it melted away into trickling streams or rolled down ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... inundation having taken place in the north of Italy, owing to an excessive fall of snow in the Alps, followed by a speedy thaw, the river Adige carried off a bridge near Verona, all except the middle part, on which was the house of the toll-gatherer, who thus, with his whole family, remained imprisoned by the waves, and in momentary danger ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... A thaw had set in, it was muddy and cold, the ice on the river broke, and the roads became impassable. For days neither provisions for the men nor fodder for the horses had been issued. As no transports could arrive, the men dispersed ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... the doctor, going closer to the fire to thaw the frozen rime from his beard, which was quite a bush of ice from the chin downward, before taking off his heavy fur ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... poet, must drink like a gipsy. Suppose I should borrow the horse of Jack Stenton— A finer ridden beast no muse ever went on— Pegasus' fleet wings perhaps now are frozen, I'll send her old Stenton's, I know I've well chosen; Be it frost, be it thaw, the horse can well canter; The sight of the beast cannot help to enchant her. All the boys at our school are well, tho' yet many Are suffered, at home, to suck eggs with their granny. "To-morrow," says daddy, "you ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... land a desert. Through the devastated country roamed thousands of starving people, gaunt and hungry as the wild beasts of the forest; they subsisted upon such berries as they found, but durst not touch a stick of their lord's wood to thaw out ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... certain crimson comforters, they placed each of us in an easy-chair and tucked the comforters in over us. These comforters, covered with crimson silk, were of great thickness, but also of extraordinary lightness, and for a few minutes we had no confidence in their power to thaw us. But they were filled with swan's-down; and presently a novel and delightful sensation—that of warmth—began to steal upon us. It steadily increased, until in quarter of an hour there might be seen upon ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... placed in R.H. Gillet's hand 42 tickets, which he declared contained the drawn numbers, where any 3 numbers should be upon a ticket. Having explained satisfactorily his intentions, he requested Mr. J. Thaw to act as his commissioner, Mr. Thaw being well known as ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... Thanksgivings,—years ago, when she wore short frocks, and used to go with John to see the turkeys fed, and be so scared when they gobbled and strutted with rage at her scarlet bombazette;—how they used to pick up frozen apples and thaw them in the dish-kettle; how she pounded her thumb, cracking butternuts with a flat-iron, and John kissed it to make it well,—only it didn't! And then how they slid down-hill before church, and sat a long two hours thereafter in the square pew, smelling of "meetin'-seed," ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... whether four days or a week had passed. He had slept with the dogs, fought across a forgotten number of shallow divides, followed the windings of weird canyons that ended in pockets, and twice had managed to make a fire and thaw out frozen moose-meat. And here he was, well-fed and well-camped. The storm had passed, and it had turned clear and cold. The lay of the land had again become rational. The creek he was on was natural in appearance, and tended as it ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... watched it all. She had seen Rachel treat a new male acquaintance before as she had just treated the vicar. To begin with, the manners of an icicle; then a sudden thaw, just in time to save the situation. She had come with amusement to the conclusion that, however really indifferent or capricious, her new friend could not in the long run resign herself to be disliked, ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the water ain't too high, and the ice don't run too swift in the Fork, it'll be all right. But if there's any such mixture of downpour and thaw as there was along the Creek back there, we may have to jump across a gap. It'll probably ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... I'm dead," said Mr. 'Possum. "Say I died last week, and you're only waiting for the ground to thaw to bury me. Tell Aspetuck ...
— Hollow Tree Nights and Days • Albert Bigelow Paine
... fall of the mercury indicates coming thunder. In winter, the rise of the mercury indicates frost. In frost, its fall indicates thaw; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... winter month, gray and gloomy, a mixture of snow and rain, frost and thaw. The trial of Mother Tonsard had required witnesses at Auxerre, and Michaud had given his testimony. Monsieur Rigou had interested himself for the old woman, and employed a lawyer on her behalf who relied in his defence on the absence of disinterested witnesses; but the testimony of Michaud ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... freely, and Nature to every man is a double of himself, so that the universe seems also cold in extremities, as though there were too little original life to fill her veins. The poet is not fire on the hearth to thaw this numbness by foreign heat. He rubs and rouses us to activity, drags us to the open air, puts us on a glowing chase, provokes us to race and climb with him till we also are thoroughly alive. No other gift of his is worth much ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... we on through these great blubbering waves ere we end our voyage? This night wind is worse than a Robin Hood's thaw." ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... matter see? I'll thaw you soon—begone to Battersea, There let thy icebergs float ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... are circulated by the million and without challenge. Frank Harris is deprived of a publisher for his "Oscar Wilde: His Life and Confession" by threats of immediate prosecution; the newspapers meanwhile dedicate thousands of columns to the filthy amusements of Harry Thaw. George Moore's "Memoirs of My Dead Life" are bowdlerized, James Lane Allen's "A Summer in Arcady" is barred from libraries, and a book by D. H. Lawrence is forbidden publication altogether; at the same time half a dozen cheap magazines devoted ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... hospitalities. The company was extremely entertaining. It comprised Mr. Jerome, celebrated in the legal world, and at that time especially celebrated in connection with a sensational case which was exciting the attention of the public from New York to San Francisco. This was the trial of Thaw for the murder of Stanford White, of which dramatic incident Evelyn Nesbit was the heroine. She was, at least in appearance, little more than a schoolgirl. She had lived with Stanford White, however, on ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... was William Thaw, of Pittsburg, who is to-day the only American holding a commission in the French flying corps. Lieutenant Thaw, a flyer of considerable reputation in America before the war, had enlisted in the Foreign Legion in August, 1914. With considerable difficulty he had himself transferred, ...
— Flying for France • James R. McConnell
... hand views give you the city at large. It is a wide stretch of cheap little brick houses, with here and there a noble architectural pile lifting itself out of the midst-government buildings, these. If the thaw is still going on when you come down and go about town, you will wonder at the short-sightedness of the city fathers, when you come to inspect the streets, in that they do not dilute the mud a little more and use ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... things would go on like this, I should begin to grumble; but we shall probably get broken in to each other in a day or two, and then I can thaw him out. We talked glittering generalities for a while—the weather, and the war prospects abroad, and the chances of getting deer on the other side of a mountain not far away—like any commonplace boobies at a county fair. Then he proposed for next morning a stream ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... don't pretend to nothin', dear;" sais I, "I am just a nateral man. There is a time for all things, and a way to do 'em too. If I have to freeze down solid to a thing, why then, ice is the word. If there is a thaw, then fun and snow-ballin' is the ticket. I listen to a preacher, and try to be the better for his argufying, if he has any sense, and will let me; and I listen to the violin, and dance to it, if it's in tune, and played right. I like ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... purse. The convents, the hospitals, and the public buildings were thrown open as places of asylum for the poor, who came in crowds for the sake of the fires that were kept there. They kept hoping for a thaw, but heaven seemed inflexible. Every evening the same copper-colored sky disappointed their hopes; and the stars shone bright and clear as funeral torches through the long, cold nights, which hardened again and again the snow which fell during the day. All day long, thousands of workmen, with spades ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... an Eskimo. When we entered the room, what did we see? A seal living in the midst of their room. The people had heard of our coming and thus put the monster in the room to thaw it up to feed our dogs with. The animal was soon taken away. The house was clean, but small. In this place we had to sleep on the floor, and we used our blankets to make a couch as well as we could. ...
— Bowdoin Boys in Labrador • Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley
... lay very deep on the ground during February, and until the l9th of March, when a rapid thaw commenced, which continued without intermission till the ground was thoroughly freed from its hoary livery, which was effected in less than a fortnight's time. The air during the progress of the thaw was much warmer and more balmy than it usually ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... fur the Gover'mint. Things ar' ripenin' fast fur the orfulest battle ever fit in this ere co'ntry. Afore the Chrismuss snow flies this ere army'll fall on them thar Rebels 'round Murfressboro like an oak tree on a den o' rattlesnakes. Blood'll run like water in a Spring thaw, an' them fellers'll hev so menny fun'rals ter tend thet they won't hev no time for Chrismuss frolics. They've raced back an' forrard, an' dodged up an' down fur a year now, but they're at the eend uv ther rope, an' hit'll be a deth-nooze fur 'em. May the ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... cold in these cells, requiring the prisoner to walk up and down the dungeon in his stocking feet to prevent his freezing, and this for a period of ten days, in nearly every instance compels submission. After the dark cells thaw out, during the summer months, they are excessively hot. Sometimes in winter the temperature is below zero, and in summer it often rises to one hundred degrees. They are then veritable furnaces. Generally, ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... him into the kitchen to thaw, and have his breakfast. That was one also of the traditions of the chateau; the postman always breakfasted. On Sundays, when there was no second delivery, he brought his little girl and an accordion, and remained ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... position in which I see such a sheet of water on the maps of to-day. This was a long ride in the then state of the roads, after the autumn rains, and with nightly freeze sufficient continually to fix the moisture, and then to renew the dampness towards the noonday thaw. Transport was not by wheel, but by pack-animals; and as these marched in companies of a half-dozen or so, in single file, haltered one to the other, each as he stepped put his foot into the prints made, not merely ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... volume of thought and power which is still among us will soon find its utterance, and justify itself to after ages by showing in harmonious and self-restrained poetry its kinship to the heroic and the beautiful of every age and clime. And till then, till the sunshine and the thaw shall come, and the spring flowers burst into bud and bloom, heralding a new golden year in the world's life, let us even be content with our pea-green and orange fungi; nay, even admire them as ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... what he pleased. What a picture of secret degradation and imbecility in the towering and apparently haughty Lord Grey! I told Melbourne that it was important to gain time, that there was an appearance of a thaw among the 199, but that most of them were in the country; communications by letter were difficult and unsatisfactory; that many were averse to breaking up the party or leaving the Duke—in short, from one cause or another doubtful and wavering; that it was not to be expected they should ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... puces, sac a vin, mousquetaire de Piquepuce, aumonier du cheval de bronze, poulet dinde de la Rapee," etc., until they were too hoarse to continue. In 1784, the winter began by heavy frosts, which were followed by a sudden thaw which flooded the city. "Paris has become a sewer; communication has been absolutely interrupted between the inhabitants, and for several days past there have been on foot only those who were compelled to it by necessity, by their occupation, or by their ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... deg. below zero—making a difference of 189 deg. In this district are the enormous deposits of mammoth bones. Spring after spring, the alluvial banks of the lakes and rivers crumbling under the thaw have given up their dead; and the islands opposite to the mouth of the Yana, and, as there was reason for believing, even the bed of the ocean itself, teems with those mysterious memorials of antiquity. The ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... made no advances. "He thinks I am angry because of his keen criticism of my picture. For the sake of my own pride, I must not let him think that I care so much about his opinion;" and Christine resolved to let some of the ice thaw that had formed between them. Moreover, in spite of herself, when she was thrown into his society, he greatly interested her. He seemed to have just what she had not. He could meet her on her own ground in matters of taste, and then, in contrast ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... the bear and those of a human being—especially when the trades have stood a while. As it is, now, you can see clearly the marks of the claws; but in a day or two, when the sun or the rain has fallen upon the snow, and melted it a little, the claw marks will then be filled up with the thaw, and, losing their sharp outlines, will look much more like the tracks of toes. For that reason, an old bear-track is, indeed, as you say, very like that ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... fly away on the invisible wings of the wind, and are seen no more forever. Empires fall because of a heavy fall of snow. Storms of rain have more than once caused monarchs to cease to reign. A hard frost, a sudden thaw, a "hot spell," a "cold snap," a contrary wind, a long drought, a storm of sand,—all these things have had their part in deciding the destinies of dynasties, the fortunes of races, and the fate of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... falling, and he was going down—down—down with it. He saw the trees on the summit of Old Windy disappear. He caught one glimpse of the neighboring ridges. Then he was blinded and enveloped in this cruel whiteness. He had a wild idea that he had been delivered to it forever; even in the first thaw it would curl up into a wreath of vapor, and rise from the mountain's side, and take him soaring with it—whither? How they would search these bleak wintry fastnesses for him,—while he was gone sailing with the mist! What would they ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... German fortifications on the Belgian coast, from Zeebrugge to Ostend, for two hours on November 30, 1915. The weather suddenly changed on the entire western front. Rain, mist, and thaw imposed a check on the operations, which simmered down to artillery bombardments at isolated points. For the next three months the combatants settled down to the exciting monotony of a winter campaign, making themselves as ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... the Silent Lake is the Glacier, its moist surface suggesting that the lake is fed by a slight thaw, while the perpendicular front at the water's edge gives the impression of a berg having recently broken off and ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... view. Shadwell has said that marriage amongst the Khasis "is purely a civil contract." This statement is not correct, for there is an elaborate religious ceremony at which God the creator, U'lei thaw briew man briew, the god or goddess of the State, U or ka'lei Synshar, and, what is probably more important, the ancestress and ancestor of the clan, Ka Iawbei-tymmen and U Thawlang, are invoked. There are three marriage ceremonies prevalent ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... party, without which she knew she could not have me, even persuading our good old Dr. Devens to leave his pulpit and people, and stamp the proceeding with his immaculate respectability. As it was, however, it looked as though we were simply to be shut in by a week of storm following the thaw. Well, there are compensations in all things: perhaps two people in whom I had some interest would know each other a trifle better ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... the last few days had given place to a thaw. The melting ice in the river was streaked in strange curves, and the bare trees along the straight heights of the Palisades were blurred by a faint bluish mist, out of which white lights and ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... fate of the walrus which Annatock was now cutting up with his axe into portable blocks of beef. For several days previous to the thaw which had now set in, the weather had been intensely cold, and the walrus had perished in consequence of its ambitious desire to repose in ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... didst on Sinai pitch, And shine from Paran, when a firie Law, Pronounc'd with thunder and thy threats, did thaw Thy People's hearts, when all thy weeds were rich, And Inaccessible for light, Terrour, and might;— How did poore flesh, which after thou didst weare, Then faint and fear! Thy Chosen flock, like leafs in a high wind, Whisper'd obedience, and their ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn't thaw it ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... cooking the potato, is to promote the expansion and separation of its cells; in other words, to render it mealy. Young potatoes are always waxy, and consequently less wholesome than ripe ones. Potatoes which have been frozen and allowed to thaw quickly are much sweeter and more watery, because in thawing the starch changes into sugar. Frozen potatoes should be thawed in cold water and cooked at once, or kept frozen until ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... of thaw before morning, Jem?"—looking anxiously up into the night, as they rested the bucket ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... too, is built by our forest-rangers who help the timber jacks build these roads. You see, while frost holds good the heaviest tree trunks can be readily moved over icy swamp bottoms, but in the spring, when thaw and freshets begin, the bottoms are more like a marsh, or shallow lake, than anything else I know of. Then these corduroy roads are a make-shift for hard ground," explained Polly, while Noddy started to clip-clop ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... him five hundred pound. The year befaw latht he horthed the wegiment at an immenthe expenthe, and we're called the Queen'th Own Pyebalds from that day. Ever theen uth on pawade? The Empewar Nicolath burtht into tearth of envy when he thaw uth at Windthor. And you see,' continued my young friend, 'I brought Gules down with me, as the Governor is very sulky about shelling out, just to talk my mother over, who can do anything with him. Gules told her that I was Fitzstultz's favourite of the whole ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... which she could lay hands, and only eliciting alternately 'Very nice,' and 'How sweet!' A little more was made of the alarms of the fire, and the preparations for clearing the house, and there was a further thaw about the bazaar. It would be such a relief from plain work, and she could get some lovely patterns from her cousin who had a missionary basket; but as to the burnt-out families, the little knowledge ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... unless we can lay in a good stock of food, and I don't suppose we could do much prospecting with the snow on the ground," Harding paused with a thoughtful air. "When we reach the settlement I must go home, but if the money can be raised, I'll be back as soon as the thaw comes, to try for the oil, Clarke's an unusually smart man, and there's no ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... dilapidated constitution of a sensitive valetudinarian. His commentators suppose he produced nothing during his marine hybernations: if the inclement season froze 'the genial current of his soul,' the aspect of the sea did not thaw it. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... him and began talking as if Dal were just another classmate. Tiger's open friendliness had been like a spring breeze to Dal who was desperately lonely in this world of strangers; their friendship had grown rapidly, and gradually others in the class had begun to thaw enough at least to be civil when Dal was around. Dal had sensed that this change of heart was largely because of Tiger and not because of him, yet he had welcomed it as a change from the previous intolerable coldness ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... a sudden and depressing thaw. From her crowned ridges down to the swollen river rushing at her feet, she stood shivering in a robe of clinging mist; yet the day was warm with the raw deceptive closeness that chills to the bone and awakens the latent ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... turning over, or a gunboat dropping on to you. Then there was a good deal of very genuine excitement to be got out of placer-mining in British Columbia, especially when there was frost in the ranges, and you had to thaw out your giant-powder. Shallow alluvial workings have a way of caving in when you least expect it of them. After all, however, I think I like the ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... and well watered country, of groves and prairies; but at that season the march was necessarily attended with the utmost degree of hardship and fatigue. The weather had grown mild, so that there was no suffering from cold; but in the thaw the ice on the rivers melted, great freshets followed, and all the lowlands and meadows were flooded. Clark's great object was to keep his troops in good spirits. Of course he and the other officers shared every ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Sir," Wu Chin-hsiao ventured, "so much snow has fallen this year that it's everywhere out of town four and five feet in depth. The other day, the weather suddenly turned mild, and with the thaw that set in, it became so very hard to make any progress that we wasted several days. Yet albeit we've been a month and two days in accomplishing the journey; it isn't anything excessive. But as I feared lest you, Sir, would ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... manner, even while thoroughly hospitable in her welcome. Olivia felt the hospitality; I felt the frigidity. Julia called her "Mrs. Dobree." It was the first time she had been addressed by that name; and her blush and smile were exquisite to me, but they did not thaw Julia in the least. I began to fear that there would be between them that strange, uncomfortable, east-wind coolness, which so often exists between the two women a man ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... flat, in Druid-like device, 190 With leaden pools between or gullies bare, The blocks lie strewn, a bleak Stonehenge of ice; No life, no sound, to break the grim despair, Save sullen plunge, as through the sedges stiff Down crackles riverward some thaw-sapped cliff, 195 Or when the close-wedged fields of ice crunch ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... to her, a successful effort at escape might have been made. When snow on the prairie is frozen with a hard crust on the surface, the light wolf can run easily on the top of it, while the heavy horse breaks through at every stride and is soon knocked up. The case is reversed when a thaw softens the surface, for then the short-legged wolf flounders helplessly in its depths, while the long-limbed and powerful horse can gallop through it with comparative ease. But the good mare, intelligent though she was, did not consider ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... and spake him fair, and make much of him. I wish you had knocked his two eyes out, Master Lance, instead of only blacking of 'un. And a fortnight lost through that pisonin' Spraggs! And the weather going on, snow and thaw, snow and thaw. There's scarcely a dog can stand, let alone a horse, and the wreaths getting deeper. Most onlucky! It hath ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... acknowledged and more widely known from the number of persons who were astonished at beholding it. In a certain year, it happened that such a quantity of snow had fallen from heaven, so great was the extent of the thaw when the sun melted it, that the water covered all the ground, and grew to the dimensions of a lake, which, spreading into the village, inundated all the houses, putting even that of Patrick in the greatest danger. But he, being then only ten ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... thanks!" he murmured. "I'd need ear-muffs and mittens to handle her. I think I'll build me some bonfire and thaw out. She must ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... her situation that would not improve was her father's aloofness. He seemed to try at times to thaw out but he persistently congealed again. One evening he got in late from the ranch, cold and wet, complaining of rheumatism. The driver went on with the team to Sleepy Cat and Doubleday told Kate he would stay all night. She had a good fire in the grate and made her father ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... culprit as she walked into Mrs. Rawlins' kitchen, but decided to give as guarded an account of the matter as she could. There would be explanations in plenty when she returned to the Parsonage. She was very glad to sit and thaw by the fire and drink hot tea, despite the difficulty of fencing with Mrs. Rawlins' questions, that good dame being consumed with curiosity, and not restrained by any feelings of delicacy from ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... journey to the ship; but about eight o'clock a small regular breeze sprung up, which, with the prevailing influence of the sun, at length cleared the air; and they soon after, with great joy, saw the snow fall in large flakes from the trees, a certain sign of an approaching thaw: They now examined more critically the state of their invalids; Briscoe was still very ill, but said, that he thought himself able to walk; and Mr Buchan was much better than either he or his friends had any reason to expect. They were ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... "January thaw" has come and gone, leaving a smooth, hard crust, just right for coasting. The heavy storms of February have piled the drifts mountain high over road and fence and wall; and the roaring winds of early March have driven the snow in blinding clouds along the ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... no petty jealousy in matters literary; and, above all, he had, as Scott recognised, but as has not been always recognised since, a really remarkable and then novel command of flowing but fairly strict lyrical measures, the very things needed to thaw the frost of the eighteenth-century couplet. Erskine offered, and Lewis gladly accepted, contributions from Scott, and though Tales of Wonder were much delayed, and did not appear till 1801, the project ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... this while had watched like one frozen into stone, seemed to thaw to life again. Her danger was past. She could never be forced to wed that coarse, black-souled Nubian, for Rames had killed him. Yonder he lay dead in all his finery with his hideous giants about him like fallen trees, and oh! in her rebellious human heart she ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... Blows the thaw-wind pleasantly, 10 Drips the soaking rain, By fits looks down the waking sun: Young grass springs on the plain; Young leaves clothe early hedgerow trees; Seeds, and roots, and stones of fruits, Swollen with sap put forth their shoots; Curled-headed ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... awa', Jean, Like snaw when it's thaw, Jean; I'm wearing awa', To the land o' the leal. There's nae sorrow there, Jean, There's neither cauld nor care, Jean, The day is aye fair In ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... passage were so plentiful, flying from south to north, and halting to rest at the lake, that Hearne felt the time had come to resume his journey, provisions being now very plentiful and the worst of the thaw over. The weather was remarkably fine and pleasant as the ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... few authors venture to doubt their much-talked-of calmness in affection. "They are still waters," wrote Esquiros, and all know what is said of still waters. Heine said they were frozen volcanoes, and that when they thaw—But, of all the opinions I have read, the most remarkable seems to me that of Saint Evremont—namely, that Dutch women are not lively enough to disturb the repose of the men, that some of them are certainly amiable, and that prudence or the coldness of their nature stands them ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... still far off. The window showed black; there was the sound of a thaw running off the eaves; the white-washed wall was painted with grotesque leaping shadows by the candle flame. At the first murmur, Nat had come and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... if in one moment he saw the whole of his life summarised in a single symbol, and understood its vanity and its folly. Ah, there was nothing for him, no wife, no life.... The tears welled up in his eyes; the shock which in its suddenness had frozen his heart, began to thaw, and grief ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... in the woods that winter, and toward spring there came a sudden, prolonged, and heavy thaw. The ice broke rapidly and every loosened brook became a torrent. Past the door of the camp, which was set in a valley, the Gornish River went boiling and roaring like a mill-race, all-forgetful of its wonted ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... degrees upon him grew A lethargy of sense, a trance, And soon imagination threw Before him her wild game of chance. And now upon the snow in thaw A young man motionless he saw, As one who bivouacs afield, And heard a voice cry—Why! He's killed!— And now he views forgotten foes, Poltroons and men of slanderous tongue, Bevies of treacherous maidens young; Of thankless friends ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... the ground continually, and the weather being clear, it was never quite dark. Our horses were kept, or rather starved, underground; and as for our servants, whom we hired here to look after ourselves and horses, we had, every now and then, their fingers and toes to thaw and take care of, lest they ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... an old Woman, as I've heard say, The frost froze her water-pipes fast one day; The frost froze her water-pipes fast at first, Till a thaw came at last, and the water-pipes burst. By came the Company, greedy of gain, And it cut her water all off at the main, It cut her water off sharp, if you please, Though it wasn't her fault that the pipes began to freeze. It wasn't her fault that the water-pipes burst. So she ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various
... want to make the sap run is a good cold snap, followed by a thaw. That's just what we've been having. It's a ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... on the snow, mild but no thaw, fine sledding. It was a good night to come home from prayer meeting at ...
— American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 3, March, 1896 • Various
... crop every fall since their eighth year, not a single failure having been experienced. The ground has never been cultivated. The nuts planted were taken at random from a barrel in a grocery store. During the "silver thaw" of 1907, the most severe cold spell in the history of Oregon, one of the trees was wrenched in two, but the dismembered limb, hanging by a shred, bore a full crop of walnuts the ...
— Walnut Growing in Oregon • Various
... was bright and frosty, and then came the thaw—and after that the spring. The sun shone, green buds began to appear, the swallows built their nests, and people began to open their windows. The little children began to play in their garden on the roof again. The roses were ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... well judge of any change of climate, as we have just had a change from hard frost to thaw; but every thing has the appearance of a milder atmosphere. I enquired into the reason of the want of hedges hitherto, and their abundance here, and was told, that it arose from the greater subdivision of property ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... write; this frost locks up all our communications; it has sent poor Tom back to us after nine days' sea-sickness, and when I hoped he was already at Berlin; and we are now told that less than a fortnight's thaw will not open the intercourse again. In that time how many things may be done, and what is worse, how many may not be done! Naples and Sardinia, with all that belongs to them, you will have seen in the French papers as fully as we, and we know ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... doleful cloak, and make it look more wretched. The stars, to be sure, coldly watched it when the nights and the smoke were clear enough; and all bad weather stood by it with a rare fidelity. You should alike find rain, hail, frost, and thaw lingering in that dismal enclosure when they had vanished from other places; and as to snow, you should see it there for weeks, long after it had changed from yellow to black, slowly weeping away its grimy life. The place had no other adherents. ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens |
